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United Linux

This week at COMDEX in Las Vegas the UnitedLinux group announced the release of Version 1.0 of its UnitedLinux product, with a launch event sponsored by HP and IBM.

UnitedLinux 1.0 was not designed to be a standalone product, but instead will be the engine that powers distributions from its four founding members, Conectiva S.A., The SCO Group, SuSE Linux AG, and Turbolinux, Inc. All four companies were expected to announce new versions of their Linux enterprise distributions, powered by the UnitedLinux core, this week, according to this eWeek article. This announcement for SuSE's Linux Enterprise Server 8 is the first official 'powered by UnitedLinux' announcement we've seen. Each of the four new 'powered by UnitedLinux' offerings will have its own local language support, value-add features, and pricing.

So what's in the basic package?

• Language support: UnitedLinux Version 1.0 will initially be available in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, French and Hungarian.
• Standards compliance: UnitedLinux supports standards, such as LSB 1.2 and OpenI18N from the Free Standards group.
• File Systems: UnitedLinux supports the Journaling File System (JFS), Reiser File System (ReiserFS), XFS, and the ext3 filesystem.
• Platform support: UnitedLinux platform support includes Intel (32 and 64-bit), AMD, PowerPC (IBM eServer iSeries and pSeries), and IBM eServer zSeries mainframe.

That's just a small part of what's in this enterprise ready workhorse. The press release also includes information on the distribution's high availability, security, scalability, development environment and more.

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Weekly News for November 19, 2002 is available. This week you can read about the Debian art collection; the soon-to-expire LZW patent; and much more.

Anthony Towns reports on packages with release-critical bugs that have been removed from Debian testing (and in some cases unstable). More will likely be removed in the near future if bugs are not fixed.

The Debian Board of Directors of Software in the Public Interest would like to expand. According to the by-laws, the Board should include 8-12 people, and we may have a number of advisers as well. This message solicits applications and nominations.

A second Bug Squashing Party for the Sarge release will take place during the next weekend (22-24 of November).

A fire at the computing facilities of Twente University has taken out the server known as satie, which may disrupt some services temporarily.

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Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter - Issue #68

The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for November 14, 2002 is available. This week: 9.0 Packs are shipping; the Advanced Extranet Server is cookin'; MandrakeClub has multilingual forums; and much more.

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MontaVista Linux Professional Edition 3.0 Launches

MontaVista Software has announced the launch of the MontaVista Linux Professional Edition 3.0, the next generation of this embedded operating system and development platform. "Offering enhanced networking capabilities, increased tools coverage and the latest Linux technology, this newly updated version of the product enables embedded equipment manufacturers to develop an even broader range of devices."

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Slackware Linux

Slackware has some more upgrades to the the Slackware current tree, mostly in the KDE packages. Also glibc was patched and recompiled to improve compatibility with older binaries. See the change log for complete details.

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Trustix Secure Linux

Trustix Secure Linux has released TSL 2.0 Technology Preview 1 (also known as Rainstorm).

TSL 1.5 users should check out these bug fix advisories for samba and apache/mod_ssl. The apache/mod_ssl update also applies to older versions of Trustix Secure Linux. Trustix recommends that all systems with these packages installed be upgraded, or if you are not using these packages you should remove them from your system.

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Minor distribution updates

Bootix Linux Becomes Phrealon Linux

The Slackware-based CD-ROM distribution formerly known as Bootix has been renamed to Phrealon Linux due to some trademark issues.

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LindowsOS

According to this article in News.com, Lindows has released LindowsOS 3.0 as an independent product. Previously, LindowsOS was bundled with low-cost PCs, not available as a standalone product. "The company said the LindowsOS 3.0 package will sell for about $129 and support dozens of Linux applications, including ones that mirror Windows applications. The software package, which is available online including at Walmart.com, also features Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 6.0 word processing software and supports more than 800 printers." Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth

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Lycoris

Lycoris and Ericom Software team up to release Desktop/LX InterConnect, a simple corporate desktop with full office suite and outstanding host connectivity tools.

Lycoris is now offering $199 Desktop/LX Certified Microtel PCs on WalMart.com.

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Distribution reviews

Interview: Klaus Knopper, Creator of Knoppix (DistroWatch)

DistroWatch interviews Klaus Knopper, creator of Knoppix - a Linux distribution which runs from CD-ROM. "I have heard of some unusual ways of using Knoppix, apart from the usual "coaster" thing, if someone has no success in booting a computer with exotic chip sets with Linux. The CD is used as a certified running Linux system for commercial proprietary products (which is perfectly legal in the sense of the GPL), and some are working on a version with a Mosix kernel or other clustering stuff to boot an array of PCs without hard disk installation."

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Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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